Jazz trio makes Sweet Talk with its music

Devin Drobka’s drums cut through the air as if he’s Elvin Jones searching for John Coltrane.

Dustin Carlson’s fingers run up and down the octave scale on his guitar like he’s channeling the ghost of Charlie Christian.

Jake Henry raises his trumpet and calls for the spirit of Miles Davis.

The music is free, alive and swirling jazz — Sweet Talk, as the New York-based jazz trio’s moniker promises.

“Obviously there are influences in a medium like jazz,” Henry says.

Obviously. Sweet Talk pays homage to those early jazz influences, as well as to the people who taught them directly.

When it comes to composing original music, Henry draws from himself.

“I know I wrote a lot of this music to frame a lot of the more …” he says, pausing, “a lot of interesting sound based on improvisation that we’re all into.

“At the same time,” he adds, “we’re all into more traditional jazz, and this is like a meeting point.”

All three members began performing as Sweet Talk in 2011 after studying at some of the country’s most renowned schools of music.

Advanced jazz education led each of the respective musicians to gigs alongside some of the modern era’s top jazz artists.

Drobka holds a bachelor of music arts degree from the Berklee School of Music. The drummer, who graduated among the top of his class and was awarded a four-year scholarship, has performed with Jerry Bergonzi, Bruce Barth and Dave Santoro, to name a few, and keeps a busy private teaching calendar when he’s not performing.

Carlson, who holds a bachelor’s degree from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y., has played with such people as Matt Mitchell and Satoshi Takeishi. By day, the guitarist is an educator and a private guitar teacher.

Henry first learned guitar under noted instructor and jazz guitarist Tony Malaby before picking up the trumpet.

“I started playing guitar originally,” he says, “and this music is, in a lot of ways, what I like to hear in guitar. It’s kind of my take on all the influences.”

Henry holds music degrees from McGill University and City College of New York, both in jazz trumpet performance.

Like his Sweet Talk colleagues, Henry also teaches, and he works clinics and workshops into the band's tour schedule between gigs.

Before hitting the stage Thursday at Merrimans' Playhouse, the three jazz musicians will give a clinic at Milwaukee Area Technical College following their appearance in Milwaukee.

Since the school has no budget for music to speak of, Sweet Taste will make their teaching engagement extra sweet at no cost to the school. Henry is asking respective communities where they appear to help fund the clinics.

"It really depends on the opportunities that are there," Henry says of mixing a tour schedule with performances and teaching. "When we book a tour, we generally will try and find some gigs that we want to play, or a clinic that would make (it) possible to have some breathing room to book some nicer gigs."

Usually, they find students who are wide open to learning anything new that has to do with their own instrument of choice, or jazz in general.

"A lot of the people we encounter, the students we deal with, already have quite a bit of interest in jazz."

Henry can relate.

School taught him how to play. Working on a stage to a room filled with people looking for the next Miles Davis taught him to compose and transform the music in his head into a jazz voice resonating through his trumpet.

In Concert Sweet Talk performs at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Merrimans' Playhouse, 1211 Mishawaka Ave., South Bend. Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 at the door; $10 for students,. For more information, call 574-329-3430 or visit the website merrimuse@sbc global.net.